A silicon carbide substrate has recently begun to be used for manufacturing a semiconductor device. Silicon carbide has a wider band gap than silicon, which is a more common material. Thus, a semiconductor device including a silicon carbide substrate has advantages such as high breakdown voltage, low on-resistance, and small performance reduction under a high temperature environment.
As in a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device including a silicon substrate, an annealing step for activating an impurity region is required in a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device including a silicon carbide substrate. Different materials for a substrate require different optimal annealing steps, however. For example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2002-289550 (Patent Literature 1) discloses an annealing step of irradiating a wide band gap semiconductor such as silicon carbide with laser light having energy equal to or larger than the band gap.